Billy Bob!

28 July 2008 - Monday, Portland. Warm, partial cloud.

Sleep in again! Mostly because I stayed up until 2am last night watching that movie..

Everyone else had work, so my friend and I walked down the road to a little cafe called...Coffee Mama's (or something) for breakfast. I had a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese and a blueberry/peach smoothie. Definitely yum. The people who served us there were really nice, so we went back for another snack another day, but I can't remember when.

So after breakfast we walked around the stores in the suburb and found most of them are closed on a Monday *sigh*

The first shop that was open was an 'antique store'. It was mostly a second-hand/junk/selling-on-behalf-of store, with the odd valuable thing thrown in for good measure. There was a lot of interesting stuff though, like a whole box of advertisements from WWII for cigarettes and washing powder etc. It doesn't sound too interesting, I guess, but they were full page adverts that mostly had a half-page story with a little moral at the end, showing why you should buy that product.
We spent about two hours looking up and down the aisles and then headed home for lunch.

In the afternoon we watched Calendar Girls because I hadn't seen it before and it happened to be there, and we hung out and read and stuff. I don't really remember so obviously it wasn't important. The evening was much more interesting.

There was a summer concert in the park with some band, so we packed up some food and headed off for a picnic dinner there. We didn't end up really listening to the music, so I don't know who the band was, or what style of music they played. There were four of us - my friend, the girl we were staying with, her flatmate and me. We all sat around on the blanket eating the bread, cheese, sugar-snap peas, chocolate, cherries, blueberries and strawberries....mmmmmm....

The girl we were staying with has been using an internet dating site and invited along this guy Bill who she wanted to meet. He eventually turned up, along with his cousin Jeff and giant german shepherd called Weyland. The cottonwood fluff from the trees was flying around in the light breeze and looking beautiful in the sun as it came from behind the trees.

Bill had a lot of questions about NZ - if we have much going on in the metals industry, what kind of jobs, how much it would cost to buy 100 acres of farmland, what the best month for trout fishing is. I couldn't answer many of them but did my best - he was doing enough talking anyway hehe.

Anyway, in the course of the conversation it came up that Bill's middle name is Robert. William Robert. That's right - Billy Bob. Not only have I seen dogs in bags but I have met someone named Billy Bob. I'm definitely getting the full american experience... I even took a photo of his drivers licence to prove it!

It was absolutely lovely and warm that evening. I was wearing a skirt and it was so mild that I didn't put my jacket on until about 9.30pm and wasn't wearing my sandals. Some people had a coloured, blinking set of petanque balls (which are commonly called here by the italian name - Bocci ball) and were playing with them. It had an effect like a christmas tree spread out over the ground and looked cool.

Observations:
- In the states I've been in pedestrians have right of way at intersections. This means that if you want to cross the road you just walk on out there and cars will stop for you. Even if you're not at an intersection, cars will stop anyway. Still, walking out in front of cars is just weird (and in NZ, practically suicidal) so it feels odd every time I do it.
- Chickpeas are called garbanzo beans. It was very weird picking up a tub of hummus and seeing the first ingrediant being Garbanzo beans.
- At the talbe in Longview there was a discussion in which 'white green beans' were mentioned. As far as I can tell, they were referring to butter beans. They call yellow cheese, like our cheddar, 'white cheddar' cheese, so I guess if the string beans are yellow, they are 'white'.

I hope that doesn't confuse you too much, it's 11.15pm here tonight so I'm going to bed.